Weekly Ponder #9 – The Philosophical Blind Spot Of Technology or: “Cool! But What FOR?”

Weekly Ponder #9

The Philosophical Blind Spot Of Technology or: “Cool! But What FOR?”

If every person could be characterized by a single question that defines their interests or outlook on life, I feel sometimes that the word most appealing or fitting to the vast majority of our generation would be “what?” As a person who would mostly characterize his outlook on life with “why?” that would put me in the minority then, I suppose.

One area where this applies is our popular celebration of science and technology as that which makes us as a species the best and greatest since the dinosaurs died off. A little while back, I saw two TED talks, one by University of Pennsylvania professor Vijay Kumar, and one by Regina Dugan of DARPA. Both made me think about this topic of whats and whys. The first talk was essentially a celebration and discovery of nothing short of amazing technology that Kumar and his students had developed to show off little flying robots that could hover (like humming birds), fly formations with advanced AI, and even play the song from James Bond in their own band. The second talk was also about humming bird robots (that even looked like humming birds) and also about a new Mach-20 flying supersonic glider.

In both cases, my first impression was “wow!” My second was “why?” My third was “what for?” Not sure if in that order, actually…

See for yourself this demonstration and truly prodigious product of smart, hard-working brains.

Vijay Kumar’s talk here:

Regina Dugan’s talk here:

Now let me preface that my thinking or questioning here is nothing ground-breakingly new. Yet I cannot help voicing this question again and again from time to time: why does the overwhelming majority of us seem to care so much more about WHAT we make than WHY we make it?

In Professor Kumar’s case, if you read the transcript even, the vast majority of words is spent on explaining the mechanics, the engineering and the mechanism behind his brilliant flying robots. A small portion of airtime is then used to hint at what could be done with the invention (like accompanying police during a raid). On the other hand, absolutely no time is spent by Kumar (or TED organizers for that manner) to field questions about what SHOULD NOT be done with this sort of invention.

From the first moment of “wow” in my mind (which lasted 10 seconds) until the end of the talk, I could not help wondering how easy it was for a robot that can carry a drumstick or play the guitar to be also equipped with a knife, a gun or grenades. Wait, make that twenty robots equipped like that with the ability to hover, wait, and fly formation for more effective delivery. Do you find me cynical or paranoid for harboring such concerns? As someone with considerably below-average creativity and IQ, it still frightens me to this moment what the more creative and intelligent people out there with questionable sanity could do with such technology in their hands.

Then consider Regina Dugan’s talk (fast forward to the Q&A with Chris Anderson). Let me simply reproduce an excerpt from the transcript here:

CA: What do you picture that glider being used for?

RD: Well our responsibility is to develop the technology for this. How it’s ultimately used will be determined by the military. Now the purpose of the vehicle though,the purpose of the technology, is to be able to reach anywhere in the world (in less than) 60 minutes.

CA: And to carry a payload of more than a few pounds? Like what’s the payload it could carry?

RD: Well I don’t think we ultimately know what it will be, right. We’ve got to fly it first.

CA: But not necessarily just a camera?

RD: No, not necessarily just a camera.

Reflect on this one more time. “The purpose of the technology is to be able to reach anywhere in the world in less than 60 minutes.” Is that a “purpose”? Or is it rather not better called a “specification”? While we’re at it, I’ll let you fill in the unsaid possibilities and substitutes for “camera” as well – if you have imagination, that is.

Either way, the point of this for me is not to detract from the genius of these and many other inventions usually show-cased at gatherings like TED. The point is simply my sheer wonderment at how bright human beings can expend hours and years to use their brains towards extraordinary contortions and bouts of intellect – without spending as much as a five minutes reflecting on what the purpose is of their exercise in ingenuity.

No doubt, right now a large number of inventions around the world indeed is being made with particular purpose in mind, ideally to the betterment of human life or the alleviation of suffering. But by and large, I still marvel sometimes at the dominating mode of science and technology, which in its simplest expression, is the quest to make stuff for the sake of making it, and for the sake of proving that we can make it. Whether we mean to defy the gods or simply like to leave that elusive legacy after we have died, I don’t know.

You may remember my previous thoughts on the nature of intellectual curiosity at the expense of moral curiosity, and what I feared we risk losing in terms of meaning in our lives if we cannot balance the two. Although similar thoughts came to my mind today at this topic, I am mostly struck at how our contemporary modern society still seems to define the notion of progress by what we are capable of making. Does it seem old-fashioned or even heretic for me to ask why we never seem interested in defining “progress” by our capability of “knowing how to make something, but refraining from making it”?

Again, I am assuming that as a species, we ideally would consider the idea of “progress” as a noble and worthwhile goal in all that we do and work for. Another way of thinking about this is to ask what would happen to us if we only invented or made half the number of scientific discoveries in a given year. Would pain and suffering increase? Would we be more bored? Would our capacity to be happy and love decrease? Would the world stop spinning?

I’ll leave it to you to answer this for yourself, but it is precisely my own answer to these questions that leads me to live a life not as a scientist or engineer. Don’t get me wrong, my admiration for such people has in no way diminished just because of my personal choices or intellectual limitations. Yet for the life of me I feel that something in the human project seems strangely… incomplete when what we care most about is the fulfillment of our monkeying instinct to make stuff without much care (or, as Regina Dugan suggests, any responsibility taken) for the consequences of the things we put into the world.

I suppose suggesting that we even just occasionally refrain from finishing a thought into an experiment and product, that is, from being somehow “less inquisitive” is a fool’s wish in the same way it’s silly to ask us to stop breathing air, drinking water, or to stop playing with toys. The instinct for scientific inquiry remains with us and will not slow down anytime soon, and I take both comfort in as I’ve made my uneasy peace with this fact.

Yet somewhere I keep wondering if it might still be possible for us to inject a little bit more “why”, a little bit more “what if” and a little bit more “what for” into our much-celebrated “whats”. “Progress” in the sense of numbers of inventions, cannot be slowed down, as we have learned. But perhaps, even if we are incapable of stopping its power, perhaps we can affect its trajectory?

Could we imagine the possibility of attaching to this “streetcar names scientific progress” a few sturdy robots with “sanity”, “common sense”, “compassion” and “meaning” programmed onto them? Does anyone besides the inventors themselves hold responsibility over what they make? Should there be anyone? As far as I can tell, there are plenty of regulatory agencies and standardization bodies. But I have yet to find a legalized entity that is mandated explicitly to govern common sense and sanity. One reason for such an agency being absent, I suppose, is that we can’t agree in whom we would trust to make a call for common sense on behalf of us. Another, more disturbing reason, is perhaps that it remains an unquestioned assumption that “the markets” know not only how to allocate economic resources, but also how to allocate wisdom.

Do you really believe that?

In the end, is the intrinsic freedom to invent and create so inalienable from us that we are left accountable only to ourselves – or to nobody, at worst? In the case of Regina Dugan, can we then simply “give away” this responsibility to the users/customers of the things we produce? Is that the risk we are willing to take in exchange for absolute, unchallenged and unfettered freedom to invent?

“What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” Regina Dugan asks at the beginning of her talk.

That’s a good question. And I’m sure there’s no lack of great answers, either.

But it would be better, perhaps, if we were to add: “and why would you want to do that again?”

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